randomjsa:I love how two of those relate to raising taxes on oil companies.

You've got 90 billion dollars to piss away by throwing it at your friends in the non-existent green energy industry but you continue to bemoan and cry the oil companies?

President Obama's 2011 jobs proposal

More stimulus to be used on "shovel ready" projects and to pump up union supporters.

Raise tax rates on millionaires

Only a liberal could think "The private sector isn't doing so hot these days, let's take more money out of it and use it with all the efficiency and competence of the government" is actually a good idea.

The top 1% are just sitting on their money. That's what always happens in a bad economy. Give it to the middle class and the poor, it'll work it's way up again, don't worry.

LordJiro:Getting rid of it entirely is a bad idea. The minority needs to have some power, after all, to block anything that's seriously bad. But a filibuster should be more difficult, something a Congresscritter actually has to sacrifice for. If stopping a bill is so important, they should be willing to WORK for it.

THISsimple enough, make the filibuster dynamic again. must be on the floor, while in session. you stop, they can vote. NOTHING else can be done by the senate while the filibuster is ongoing. NOTHING.Other than hardship, all senators must stay in the room.

I would go a step further and require that whatever they talk about actually be on the TOPIC of the bill.Make them farking actually repeat over and over WHY they think the bill is bad!!!get 10 hours of that and the people will start complaining to their congressmen

ramblinwreck:cman: I am surprised I will be the first person to point this out:

getting rid of the filibuster will work against you when the other side is majority and your side is minority

I think that the Dems are pretty confident this may NEVER happen again as demographics are shifting even more and the Senate usually represents the actual electoral environment as the House is corrupted by gerrymandering (even though D Reps received a majority of actual votes vs members in the House).

As a progressive, Democratic voter, I am certain the Democrats will again be in the minority at some point.

And I still want filibuster reform.

That's because it:

1) is undemocratic,

2) screws up the assessment of responsibility in our political system (59 Democrats want something, and 40 Republicans and 1 Democrat oppose it--so the Democrats get blamed for failing to pass it), and

3) makes the system less responsive to popular will.

Number three is the big one, and it is why conservatives SHOULD oppose filibuster reform, and why progressives should support it. As the system becomes more responsive, it will encourage public participation. Increased public participation will in turn move the country to the left. That's why the Republicans work so hard at discouraging public participation at every turn.

I agree with this direction. Televising a bunch of senators reading the phone book might make the average person take an interest in the legislation being discussed and put pressure one way or the other.

That being said, Reid better enact some sort of filibuster reform or get rid of the means to do it because you know damn well if/when the GOP has a chance to use this loophole to their advantage they will do so in a second. The only suprising thing is that they didn't think of this when they had the opportunity.

StopLurkListen:Mentat: DamnYankees: While, with a GOP House this issue is less practically relevant, the filibuster is and remains a travesty.

No, the filibuster is fine and serves a useful purpose in protecting the rights of the minority. The problem is how it's currently implemented. Senators don't even have to use the filibuster as the rules stand now, they can simply use the threat of a filibuster plus endless procedural votes to bring things to a halt.

Actually the mechanics of a "real" filibuster make things more inconvenient for the majority to maintain a quorum. Those that say "bring back the days of reading the phone book" may not realize that when you *do* have that, the minority can just schedule their days in shifts and continually yield their time to the next guy on the schedule. It's pretty easy for them. The majority, however, have to keep their members around, otherwise there's no quorum, and the session's adjourned.

Reid's got the right idea. He's not eliminating it, but removing the "motion to proceed" and maybe reducing the threshold to 55, would remove a LOT of the mechanical obstructions. Plus, the Republicans shouldn't fear it since nothing truly dangerous to their ideology would get past the House.

One of Senator Merkley's ideas for reforming the filibuster was requiring the minority to maintain a minimum number of people on the floor to sustain the filibuster. The minimum number of people required to sustain it would increase the longer the filibuster was sustained. I think the thresholds he suggested were 5 people for the first 24 hours, 10 for the next 24 hours, and 20 after that. I'd be inclined to suggest it eventually hit 40 since you need more than 40 people to make a cloture vote fail, but I'm crazy.

StopLurkListen:Actually the mechanics of a "real" filibuster make things more inconvenient for the majority to maintain a quorum. Those that say "bring back the days of reading the phone book" may not realize that when you *do* have that, the minority can just schedule their days in shifts and continually yield their time to the next guy on the schedule. It's pretty easy for them. The majority, however, have to keep their members around, otherwise there's no quorum, and the session's adjourned.

Reid's got the right idea. He's not eliminating it, but removing the "motion to proceed" and maybe reducing the threshold to 55, would remove a LOT of the mechanical obstructions. Plus, the Republicans shouldn't fear it since nothing truly dangerous to their ideology would get past the House.

I'm not advocating that. My preference would be in eliminating anonymous holds and then switching to a tiered system whereby the first week you would need 60 votes to break the filibuster, the second week 55 and every subsequent week 51. You would obviously need to close some other loopholes, but that would give the minority an opportunity to slow things down without being able to completely shut down the legislative branch.

Mentat:DamnYankees: While, with a GOP House this issue is less practically relevant, the filibuster is and remains a travesty.

No, the filibuster is fine and serves a useful purpose in protecting the rights of the minority. The problem is how it's currently implemented. Senators don't even have to use the filibuster as the rules stand now, they can simply use the threat of a filibuster plus endless procedural votes to bring things to a halt.

Actually the mechanics of a "real" filibuster make things more inconvenient for the majority to maintain a quorum. Those that say "bring back the days of reading the phone book" may not realize that when you *do* have that, the minority can just schedule their days in shifts and continually yield their time to the next guy on the schedule. It's pretty easy for them. The majority, however, have to keep their members around, otherwise there's no quorum, and the session's adjourned.

Reid's got the right idea. He's not eliminating it, but removing the "motion to proceed" and maybe reducing the threshold to 55, would remove a LOT of the mechanical obstructions. Plus, the Republicans shouldn't fear it since nothing truly dangerous to their ideology would get past the House.

Goddamn right. None of this "we're filibustering... now if you'll excuse us, we've all got planes to catch to our vacation homes" nonsense. If it means that much to you, you should at least be willing to put in some extra hours at work.

getting rid of the filibuster will work against you when the other side is majority and your side is minority

And keeping it works against you when you're in the majority and the other side is in the minority. The government seemed to function relatively well before 1970, when filibuster or the threat of filibuster was used extremely rarely.

Britney Spear's Speculum:fusillade762: The U.S. Postal Service has faced mounting financial troubles because of increased use of the Internet.

Oh great, this bullshiat again.

"Millennial" here,

numbers of important communications I sent/received before email was common: 7, in 13 years.number of important communications I sent/received after email was common: eleventy billion in 15 years.number of important communications I sent/received via snail mail after email common: probably about 500 in 15 years.

The USPS was doing just fine until the Republicans forced them (in 2005?) to fund their pension fund 75 YEARS in advance. That was the OP's point.

randomjsa:I love how two of those relate to raising taxes on oil companies.

You've got 90 billion dollars to piss away by throwing it at your friends in the non-existent green energy industry but you continue to bemoan and cry the oil companies?

President Obama's 2011 jobs proposal

More stimulus to be used on "shovel ready" projects and to pump up union supporters.

Raise tax rates on millionaires

Only a liberal could think "The private sector isn't doing so hot these days, let's take more money out of it and use it with all the efficiency and competence of the government" is actually a good idea.

So, the problem with the economy is that the rich just don't have enough money?

namatad:"a bill to end a provision in tax law that allows companies to deduct the cost of moving jobs overseas as a business expense. The bill would have given an additional tax credit for moving jobs back to the U.S."

NOW WHY would turtle-americans be against a bill like this?Time to think about making turtle soup.

GAT_00:kronicfeld: Someone will shiat on you, but your point is well made.

There is very rarely such a thing as a well made point involving Hitler. I don't know what was in the part you didn't quote, but there was no brilliant argument in the part you did.

Ahh, GAT, the only one who I actually care about who put me on ignore.

I know you wont see this, and maybe if someone can quote me, you will be able to see this.

I was using the authors simplistic logic to show that the argument for abolishing the filibuster based upon things they liked that did not pass was a horrible argument because the author fails to remember the negative things that would have passed without the filibuster.

"a bill to end a provision in tax law that allows companies to deduct the cost of moving jobs overseas as a business expense. The bill would have given an additional tax credit for moving jobs back to the U.S."

NOW WHY would turtle-americans be against a bill like this?Time to think about making turtle soup.